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Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 20, 2025

Stormlight Archive is where I pretty much bailed on Sanderson. I really liked the first book, but the second was so tedious I lost any desire to continue the series.

This is, in fact, what seems to happen with all his series. A decent first novel increasingly becomes self-referential Cosmere wank in the later books. And more and more it's Brandon Sanderson (tm) writing a Brandon Sanderson (tm) novel. The man has no range.

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 20, 2025

Out of curiosity, of the people here that watched the video, who found the video chilling to watch?

I didn't. I do find plenty of things online disturbing, but this wasn't one of them.

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 20, 2025

The video of George Floyd just looked really unusually bad, and it came at the right time(the lockdowns when black culture had adapted to social-media scrolling driven video-based victimmongering rather than text based a la facebook or radio), in the right place(a white progressive ruled city). I think that's the reason. Most people killed by the cops are scumbags, even if they don't deserve to die, and so mathematically an unusually bad-looking video at the right place and time will probably have a scumbag in it.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

I live in that general area, and none of this sounds remotely familiar or believable. Are there a lot of illegals, and crime (especially in the Baltimore -DC corridor)? Of course. But all these tall tales about one town after another being "invaded" by mustachioed Mexicans beating up the high school students, roads swarming with drunken gangsters, museums literally being torn up like an SNL sketch of Great Replacement Theory?

Obviously asking for places and news articles would be tantamount to asking someone to dox themselves, so happily, no one will ever be required to prove any of this and people will believe it or not according to what they already believed.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

(Also that’s just WhiningCoil don’t worry about it.)

Yeah, he's not wrong.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

Believe me. After we got over the initial shock, the topic was the butt of our jokes for weeks.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

Am I the only one here who actually likes rice and beans? It's tasty and easy to cook up when you're in a rush and the beans provide good protein so it's not the most unhealthy thing out there either.

Friday Fun Thread for July 18, 2025

Nice! I just hit 200 on my current story, nipping at your tail! I put yours on my to-read list, always looking for good new scifi. Haven't really found anything recent that scratched the itch since Theft of Fire.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

Assassins in the ass in stores.

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 20, 2025

I’ve read all five. Don’t worry about it. The quality is a bit uneven IMO but that’s not going to be a big part of things going forward.

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 20, 2025

I just started Oathbringer, the third novel in the Stormlight Archive series. I really enjoyed the second half of The Way Of Kings and the first two-thirds of Words Of Radiance, but I found the totally forced love triangle her appears to be building between Shallan, Kaladin, and Adolin extremely tiresome and off-putting. I’m hoping he abandons this as the series continues, but clearly he put it there for a reason. (The reason, I suspect, is that he realized he is creating a commercial product which is likely to be consumed by a large audience of women, who want and expect that sort of thing. Perhaps I’ll be proved wrong and he’ll develop it in a way that is more artful and plot-relevant than he has this far.) I’m loving the world-building, I just need the characters to be more consistently well-written if I’m going to continue the series after this one.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

More words to justify treating simple and clear descriptive names as if you are a Harry Potter character afraid of summoning He Who Is Not To Be Named. This is not any kind of rational or principled opposition to a nebulous "enemy." It's literal superstition.

There are any number of people and organizations we all hold in disdain or worse. Inventing euphemisms or derogatory epithets to avoid naming them is the level of response I expect from young teens.

Friday Fun Thread for July 18, 2025

Better to get divorced, charged, or threatened when you've got a million in the bank, a paid off house, and an umbrella liability policy than when you don't have any of the above. For some things, there's preparation. For others there's not much more you can do than have a good attitude and a steady hand.

Trying to mitigate every possible risk just ends with becoming Brian Johnson and probably dying at 82 anyway.

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 20, 2025

Just had a random thought. Arguing on TheMotte about politics is kind of like stepping back in time to the 1800s before radio and TV. This is an era of politics that people like Postman like to idealize, and I see why. You come to admire and/or believe in other posters because of their arguments/style rather than good looks. At the same time, it's not like this place is a beacon of rationality (despite being better than most of the rest of the internet) at all times, which I think highlights the rose-tinted glasses nature of this kind of thinking. That said, I've enjoyed getting to know users here by the way they write, rather than how they look.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

I don't follow Tiktok at all, but it's spread to YouTube and reddit and other social media. "Unalived" is usually used as a euphemism for killed or committed suicide. "Grape" also sounds like it's supposed to be a joke to me, but it seems to be replacing the "r*pe" obfuscation that I guess is supposed to be less "triggering" than seeing all the letters.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

many of the kindest and most considerate people I have met have been whites who took great pains to live up to the color-blind promise

I corroborate this. In fact I would say out of the top 10 people I know well who I could see as such, 8-9 were white. They were all liberal too.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

the UK, visiting all the Royal tourist spots, never getting harassed by police at odd hours over edgy Twitter posts

This doesn't happen unless you openly call for physical violence, and even then only if you are stupid enough to put your real name to it.

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 20, 2025

White Witch, Black Curse (The Hollows, Book 7), by Kim Harrison. Book 11 of He Who Fights With Monsters was fine, and it wrapped up all of its major plot arcs, but I don't feel the need to run out and read book 12 right now.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

I spent some time in Virginia, Maryland, and South Central PA about 20 years ago.

I can absolutely corroborate the profound weirdness of the crimes that started occurring as the illegal immigrant population increased in a given area.

We always had a lot of bar fights, domestics, and drunk driving arrests, but as the area started getting flooded with migrant labor, the profile of the crimes started changing.

There were not one, not two, but three distinct men who were arrested for stabbing women in the ass in stores. Specifically women, specifically in the ass, and specifically in stores.

We had another rash of complaints about a serial truck bed shitter.

Later, we had a rash of cattle mutilations that turned out to be... I guess you'd call it poaching? Rustling? Either way, it was illegal immigrant orchard workers cutting their own steaks from the local dairy cows.

Don't even get me started on the cock fighting and dog fighting operations.

Believe me when I say that the character of a place does change once the illegal immigrant laborer population reaches a certain critical mass.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

No dispute on that; but a policy of official actual colourblindness would go a long way towards marginalizing these people. The average Asian doesn't care about Stop Asian Hate one way or the other, an official policy of marginalizing it would not be made up for by popular support.

AADOS oppression olympics racebaiting activists have enough support from the communities that they will continue to exist as notable organizations regardless of official attitude; I don't think this is the case for Asian or Hispanic equivalents.

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 20, 2025

So, what are you reading?

I'm adding Jews in the Soviet Union, Vol. 1, another open access book, to my list. Looks like the full series isn't published yet, but volumes 1, 3 and 5 are out.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

There's a failure case, in between integration and remigration back to the homeland, that second and third generation immigrants feel like they belong to neither country: that you're fostering a nihilistic cadre of resentful young people with nothing to lose.

Just, uh, speaking from personal experience.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

Full disclosure: I am of Asian descent, living in Canada. The problem is that the well-integrated ones aren't in charge of culture or policy: and you have the activist weirdos who gain positions of responsibility. And because in general liberal whites are kind of trusting, they take it on face value that they represent the communities they are from.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

I wouldn't put high odds on anyone getting two chances to take out Trump. If you don't get him, there's a very good chance he's going to get you. And when you stay your hand the first time, it eats away at your support when people see you hesitate and don't know if you'll go through with it.

Coups come into this world like bastard children, half improvised and half compromised. If the deals and moves line up you can take it or you can let it go, but you probably can't time it.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

I actually dislike when people reflexively avoid "died" as well. I very rarely will say someone "passed away", because I think it's better to be direct about what happened. The person died, it's ok to say it.